Question

case study

Target Corp – Data Mining in Retail Target is a large retail chain that crunches data to develop insights that help target marketing and advertising campaigns. Target analysts managed to develop a pregnancy prediction score based on a customer's purchasing history of 25 products. In a widely publicized story, they figured out that a teenage girl was pregnant before her father did. The targeting can be quite successful and dramatic as this example published in the New York Times illustrates. About a year after Target created their pregnancy-prediction model, a man walked into a Target store and demanded to see the manager. He was clutching coupons that had been sent to his daughter and he was angry, according to an employee who participated in the conversation. “My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?” The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for 70 maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again. On the phone, though, the father was somewhat subdued. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. I owe you an apology.” (Source: New York Times).

Answer for this questions is just below but its someone else work , can you help me with this similar answer for this question.i just gave you the hint how to do this .

Answer: As a Retailer or Target store manager, they have right to collect all the order value or purchase material information about customer. But the store keeper are predicting the future things by the analysing last twenty-five product that she bought from the store. It’s hard for parent to accept the pregnancy result of their teen-age and high school daughter so they can be angry. Because, their prediction cannot be sure all the time, they should concern with customer before making any future guesses and sending any coupons to the customer’s address. Things can be different like may she had bought all those materials to her pregnant friends, or may be she was gifting it to her baby nieces. So shopkeeper should concern about these thing before making any prediction.

Answer 1

Data is called as the gold of the modern era. The Target Store Corp which performs data mining has all right to collect the details of their customers and analyze them. This gives them an extra advantage over their competitors as they can serve their customers well as and also rope in new customers. Although there is huge amount of data on which specific customers can be targetted through advertising, the level of advertising must be in check. For example, targeted advertising can be done by sending messages or emails. But, sending posts or mails to their address can be very personal as it also involves their family members. The model which is used for prediction can also be questioned. The model can be considered well built only if it is trained on large amounts of data and over a period of time. Building it on the users last 25 products can be considered as an ignorant or not well built model. The anger of the father in the context can be accepted. But, looking back at the scenario, the store sent the post only due to his daughters activity. I would like to conclude by saying that, the intention of the store to promote themselves in front of targetted customers is not bad, but the way they promote themselves must be within the acceptable limit.